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This is a repost of a review that also appears at Third Coast Review. Even if you’re not a fan of classic Hollywood cinema (and why the heck aren’t you?), you know the name Hedy Lamarr. According to IMDb, Lamarr has only 35 film credits, but among them are the likes of Boom Town (alongside Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable) and Cecil B. DeMille’s Sampson and Delilah. Though she was never nominated for an Oscar, so iconic was the Austrian-born actress that other starlets working at the time followed her trend-setting ways, copying her hair, her fashion choices, even her ability to generate a headline. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story,…

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For all the obscure festival releases and challenging documentaries I see, all the high-brow foreign dramas and such, you’d be forgiven for thinking that most of what I watch is, well, not that fun. Or at least, not the kind of fun one is usually looking for on a night out at the cinema. Friends, I’m here to tell you that not only do I see those other films, the ones made for the spectacle and popcorn, but you know what? I enjoy the hell out of them. I took myself to see Guardians of the Galaxy a couple years ago. I voluntarily made my way through seven Star Wars films, and now I…

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Last month, Film Twitter went all a-twitter when it was revealed that this year’s Sundance Film Festival secret screening was comedian Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, Get Out (he also wrote the original screenplay). Early buzz was effusive, a promising reception after a work-in-progress Keanu, which he co-wrote, failed to blow audiences away at SXSW last year. The team at Universal was smart to launch the film, the story of a young black photographer whose weekend visit to meet his white girlfriend’s family goes terribly wrong, at the January festival in advance of a February theatrical release. In doing so, they’ve carved out a fairly rare slice of positive momentum in an otherwise barren release…

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In 2014, director Amma Asante – former actress turned filmmaker – hit the scene in a big way with one of the most underrated films of that year, Belle. Actually her sophomore feature, she’d previously been named Most Promising Newcomer at the BAFTAs in 2005, a prescient prediction. This week, Asante returns with her latest film, A United Kingdom, the true story of a ground-breaking, continent-crossing interracial marriage built around a top-caliber cast that ultimately saves it from slipping into risky Hallmark-movie-schmaltz territory. It’s 1947 and David Oyelowo and Rosemund Pike are Seretse Khama and Ruth William Khama, the heir to the throne of Bechuanaland (later Botswana) and his white British…

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For years promoting the U.S. releases of foreign films, again and again I heard them described as “quiet.” Quiet and compelling. Quiet and taut. Quiet and affecting. It’s no wonder so many worthy imports fail to reach a large audience. Who wants to spend two hours watching a lot of quietness – which is to say, a lot of nothing – on screen? Which is why, even though it is in many ways, I will not describe Asghar Farhadi’s arresting new drama The Salesman as quiet. Yes, it employs more than one long stretch of dialogue-free action, and yes, the power of the film is in its nuances, the reaction…

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She had an intimate relationship with music, like it was a person…she would die for it. In ten or twenty years, my kid siblings may come across Amy, the new documentary that chronicles Amy Winehouse’s meteoric rise to fame in the first years of the millennium, and watch it much the way I recently watched What Happened, Miss Simone? That is, with a certain familiarity with the subject, but enough remove that the film’s revelations are brand new information to the uninitiated. Watching Amy myself, though, felt like a brutal rehashing of a life I remember quite clearly watching play out as an addiction-fueled roller coaster to its sad, premature end. The…

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You’ve found my online home for film reviews, travel adventures and everyday observations. Currently in Chicago, you’ll find archives from travels through India to life in NYC and plenty in between. Subscribe to be notified of new posts, or just check back often for what’s new in my world.